


Turning Point

by wherewolf



Category: Real Penguin Fiction
Genre: Creepypasta, First Person, Gen, Penguin POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 05:51:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16469966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wherewolf/pseuds/wherewolf
Summary: I knew there was something wrong a long time before I got back to land.





	Turning Point

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Serenade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serenade/gifts).



I knew there was something wrong a long time before I got back to land. 

I’d gone on a long dive, trawling for fish and maybe some squid if I got lucky. I’d caught some, but not enough, and gone farther out in search of more. Maybe a little farther than I’d meant to, honestly, because somewhere out there I hit some turning point and suddenly everything was different. The water gone warmer and warmer with every stroke I took. It got filmy and filthy, thick and teeming with stuff I couldn’t recognize. Even the fish were weird, fast and dull and way harder to catch. I ended up eating the fish I’d caught on the way out, but even as I swam closer and closer to home, nothing went back to the way it should be. And then I finally got back, and I surfaced onto a changed shore.

I’d made a loop, I knew I’d made a loop, and I couldn’t have gone off course more than a few miles either direction, but everything was strange and warped. The snow underfoot was warm and grainy. All the birds sounded wrong – and they looked wrong, too, when I managed to catch sight of one ambling its way across the shallows. 

I dragged myself away from the water and collapsed. I was hungry again, but the shallows had been nearly empty and the water was dangerous. I called out my name, _long long short, long long short_ , but no one answered. I ate a few mouthfuls of snow to ward off thirst and started exploring, calling out again and again, but the only sound I heard was my own echoing voice. It was like I had crossed into an entirely new world. 

This new world was both empty and not. I didn’t see the birds I expected, or even any opportunistic seals. But everywhere I went, these strange, wasted creatures stared at me. They stood upright like penguins, but stretched to horrifying proportions. Most of them had too little belly and too much bone, gaunter than any living thing I’d seen. They had flat faces, with no snout or beak, and long limbs like squids, but more rigid.

Normally, if I saw anything so thin, it would be on its side and rotting, and I wouldn’t have to worry. But everywhere I went these things turned their heads and stared at me with their forward-facing eyes. Some of them came towards me, and I stumbled away faster. 

I wanted to go back into the water and swim away, but I kept hearing barking, almost like a seal’s. I didn’t _see_ any seals, it had to be something else, but I knew that sound meant danger and to stay out of the shallows. I couldn’t risk certain death to get away from…maybe death. I didn’t know, then, how bad things would get. 

I kept wandering for a while, calling out intermittently, but nothing answered me. I got thirstier and ate more snow, but it sat heavily in my stomach instead of melting on my tongue. It was so hot out. I lifted my wings to try and get some airflow beneath them, but that just made me more tired. There wasn’t a cool breeze to be found. 

I ate what I could find on the shore. More snow, mostly. I ate what I thought were washed-up fish, too, but they crunched awkwardly in my mouth. Too little belly, too much bone. Just like everything else here. 

I figured out where the barking was coming from. It was these creatures that looked like seals, almost, if seals had four legs longer than any bird’s and moved the wrong way. They had teeth, though, and sometimes they seemed like they were going to come near me. Then those gaunt creatures from before would make a noise and they’d back away. 

You always had to be most scared of whatever the biggest thing there was scared of. I knew that. But it’s hard to explain how sick and disoriented I was when they made their move.

I had been eating whatever I could. I’d ventured into the water a few times and not been eaten, but I couldn’t catch much. The water itself was sick, if that makes any sense, and I felt sicker every time I got into it. But being on land didn’t help much, either. I knew there was something wrong with the snow. It was too warm and it tasted all wrong. But there was nothing else I could eat, so I kept eating it, and getting sicker. I started thinking, maybe if I swam all the way out again and came back, I’d undo whatever I’d done and the world would go back to how it was before. If I hit a turning point once, I could hit it again, right? But I was too sick to swim anywhere. I was too sick to move by the time the creatures grabbed me. 

They didn’t have talons. They didn’t rip into me. They knew I wasn’t going to fight. They just lifted me up, and I was limp in their grasp. They put me down – somewhere. I don’t know. It rumbled and smelled bad and moved too fast. But it was cold. For the first time in I didn’t know how long, I wasn’t too hot. I still couldn’t move, but I almost thought things were going to be okay, now.

Of course, things weren’t going to be okay.

This is the part I struggle to describe. It's too strange to explain, and the strangeness is part of the horror. But when it comes down to it, all I can say is that they did something to me. The world got hazy, like it does if you accidentally eat that purple fish and manage not to drown before making it back to land, but for a lot longer than that lasts. I couldn’t move. I wasn’t sure if I was asleep or awake, and sometimes it felt like I was both at once. Things kept happening that I couldn't be sure were real and not a dream. Things kept happening that I was sure were a dream but turned out to be real. The one thing I'm sure of is that they did something to my throat. I could feel them moving around inside of it, like something I ate was trying to wriggle its way back out. And they did something to my stomach, too, later. Or at the same time, I don’t know. Everything got so confusing. I wish I could tell it better, but all I can really remember is the scrape of something sharp on something sharp, noises I couldn’t interpret, and being touched again and again by something alien. Not beaks, not flippers. Something deathly hot and five-pronged, again and again. 

Eventually it stopped, and I could sleep for real. And when I woke up, I was somewhere different again. 

It was like they’d tried to make home for me again, only I knew it wasn’t real. In some ways it scared me more than the place with the warm snow from before – how had they known what home looked like? Could they read my mind? 

I saw fewer of the gaunt creatures. I saw other things, instead. Some birds that looked almost like the ones I recognized, mostly. A few things that looked like seals. It was like the creatures were trying to fool me into thinking the world wasn’t changed, that I was back home. I wasn’t fooled. My stomach throbbed with whatever they’d done to me. I knew they’d do it again if I didn’t get away. 

I tried. I tried so many times. There was some kind of barrier keeping me locked in. I could touch it, and sometimes when it rained I could see it, but I couldn’t move it no matter how hard I pressed. The creatures didn’t react at all when I tried to bite them. There was a “sea” for me to swim in, but it was laughably shallow and small. Fake, like everything else. I couldn’t get through or around the rock walls to get somewhere else. 

I kept trying. I screamed for help, or for any penguin that heard me to stay away, I’m not sure which. I must have beaten my beak against the barrier a thousand times. I looked for holes, any holes, in the rock. But there were none. Eventually, I came to realize what I should have known from the beginning: I was going to die there, alone, surrounded by monsters.

And then they let me go.

I still don’t understand why. Maybe it was because I had given up hope. Maybe they really could read my mind. Maybe I just got boring. But one day, they took me from the fake world they’d made, put me on one of their strange structures, and then another, and then let me go. 

I thought it might be a trick, but the water was so cold, and the fish were fast and real. I ate greedily, and then I swam into even colder water, and before I knew it, I could hear the distant calls of other penguins. I was home again.

Why did this happen? What were those things that caught me? Why didn’t they eat me? These are all questions I ask myself still. I don’t know the answer to any of them. The one thing I do know, though – don’t swim out too far. When the water gets warmer, turn back immediately. The things that happened to me were horrible, and I don’t think I’ve explained them well, but in a way I was lucky. They could have kept me forever there. They could have made a fake world so good it fooled even me, probably. There’s no guarantee that you’ll be so lucky if the same thing happens to you. So whatever you do, stay close to home. Stay where it’s safe, and where you know there are other penguins. Because, let me tell you, being in that fake world was awful. Having so many things happen that I couldn't begin to understand almost broke my mind. But the worst thing about it was being so terribly alone.


End file.
